The weekly Angelus messages of Pope John Paul II, plus his addresses to visiting delegations, emphasized the concerns of the Roman Catholic Church during 1998. These included international peace and justice and issues involving human life. In October the pope celebrated the 20th anniversary of his reign as pontiff.

The Vatican’s permanent observer to the UN, Suzanne Scorsone, addressed the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Speaking for the Vatican, she called for respect for the essential dignity of women and the full participation of women in public and professional life. The Vatican joined more than 120 nations in signing the convention to ban land mines. The pope called for a peaceful resolution to American-Iraqi tensions and to the conflict between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo. Indian bishops called for an end to caste prejudices in the church and also asked for land distribution among "Dalits" ("the oppressed"). The church unsuccessfully called upon several African governments to suspend violence against minorities.

The church promoted, with varying success, its agenda in defense of all human life. South African bishops continued to protest the 1997 law guaranteeing abortion on demand for up to 12 weeks. Efforts were made to oppose the widespread practice of forced teenage marriage in Kenya. German bishops were instructed by Rome to monitor more closely the 264 pregnancy counseling centres controlled by the church (15% of such centres in Germany). Women who visited such a centre and obtained a certificate testifying to having done so were eligible under German law for an abortion. Women’s groups and the local church hierarchy pressed the government of Peru to halt programs of forced contraception and sterilization. Mexican bishops spoke out against the widespread practice of contraception, partly as a moral issue and partly because, according to current projections, the declining birthrate was causing the average age of the Mexican population to increase rapidly; those older than 60 were expected to constitute 73% of the total population in 15 years. In Britain Basil Cardinal Hume spoke sharply against euthanasia.

Violence against Catholics continued in some parts of the world during the year. Islamic fundamentalism led to the closing of Catholic clubs in Khartoum, The Sudan, and to the rigorous implementation of antiblasphemy laws that targeted non-Muslims in Pakistan. In protest against the laws, Bishop John Joseph of Faisalabad committed suicide. Nationalist sentiment, sometimes augmented by militant Hinduism, provoked several incidents in India. A Catholic hospital was plundered by gangs of Hindu youths chanting anti-Christian slogans in Maharashtra state. Six missionaries and two lay workers were murdered in Rwanda. Three Chinese priests of the "underground" church were arrested. One was quickly released, and Bishop Thomas Zeng Jingmu of Yujiang was released early from his incarceration for political crimes. An American interfaith delegation explored religious repression in China but did not bring about any changes in government policy, which was that any punishment received by the Catholic Church was not for religious reasons but for political offenses. Archbishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera of Guatemala City was murdered April 26. Prior to his murder, he had spoken out against abuses by Guatemala’s former military government.

On February 21 the pope held his seventh consistory for naming new cardinals, elevating 22. Though there were no encyclicals during the year, the pope did issue two important pastoral letters. Ad tuendam fidem (May 28) demanded that all clergy and teachers subscribe to an oath of loyalty to basic Catholic doctrines. The Vatican insisted that the letter merely explained and enforced existing provisions of canon law. Critics, however, feared a crackdown on dissidents. Dies Domini (July 5) called for strict observance of the Sunday mass obligation while also insisting on the need for a weekly day of rest and renewal.

On March 16, after several years of preparatory work, the Vatican issued "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah." While arguing that the church "as such" was not responsible for anti-Semitism, the document accepted responsibility for many individual acts over the years that contributed to a climate of violence and hostility against Jews. The Shoah was attributed to Nazi ideology and secularism. The response of Jewish groups ranged from gratitude at the issuance of such a statement to deep disappointment that it did not go farther. A Catholic-Jewish commission began exploring the possibility of opening the relevant Vatican archives to scholars.

Ecumenism moved at differing paces on several fronts. Serious discussions began on how to adapt Catholicism to the cultures of Africa and Asia, where Catholics were rapidly growing minorities. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant clergies in Asia and Catholic and Evangelical groups in the U.S. sought common ground, mutual respect, and the avoidance of proselytism. Catholic and Orthodox relations in former Soviet republics and satellite nations remained tense. Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin visited the Vatican to reassure the pope regarding Russia’s freedom of conscience law, the original wording of which accorded freedom to Russia’s "traditional faiths: Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism." Partly owing to Vatican pressure, the word Orthodoxy was changed to Christianity. Anglicans and Catholics made no further progress on intercommunion. Lutherans and Catholics could not agree completely on the Doctrine of Justification but found more common ground.

The pope made several trips, including his first-ever visit to Cuba in January. Whether the pope’s efforts improved the lot of the church and of the Cuban people, as his similar efforts undeniably had for the church and people of Eastern Europe, remained to be seen. In March the pope made his second visit to Nigeria to encourage that nation’s Catholic community, which made up about 15% of the population. In June the pope visited Austria in an attempt to reconcile that country’s overwhelmingly Catholic population after a decade of clumsy administrative maneuvers and the sexual improprieties of its disgraced former archbishop. In October the pope visited Croatia.

The Orthodox Church

During 1998 the Orthodox churches in the former communist countries continued to voice discontent with the World Council of Churches (WCC). The Russian Orthodox Church, for example, was concerned with the increasingly liberal and nontraditional stance of the WCC. Following the decision in May 1997 of the Orthodox Church of Georgia to withdraw from the WCC, representatives of the Russian and Georgian churches met on March 11, 1998, to discuss their grievances with the WCC. Proposals were made for presentation at a meeting of all Orthodox churches scheduled for late April in Thessaloniki, Greece. On April 9, however, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church announced that it was withdrawing from the WCC because of its nontraditional tendencies. The meeting in Thessaloniki, attended by 15 self-governing Orthodox churches, took place April 29-May 2. Although some of the churches wanted total withdrawal from the WCC, a compromise recommended that the Orthodox member churches of the WCC express their concerns at the Assembly, to be held in December at Harare, Zimbabwe, without voting or participating in the worship services.

Archbishop Seraphim, head of the Orthodox Church of Greece, died on April 10, 1998. He had held the post for 24 years, longer than any other Greek archbishop. (SeeOBITUARIES.) On April 28 Christodoulos of Dimitriada was elected the new archbishop of Athens and all Greece. Enthroned May 9, he immediately began challenging Greek society with a fresh program of outreach to young people that gained him popularity.

In Russia enforcement began of a law passed late in 1997 that required new religious groups to function for 15 years before registering permanently as national religious organizations. Western civil and religious leaders opposed the law. Also in Russia, public attention was focused on the burial of the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, who were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 in Yekaterinburg. The burial took place in St. Petersburg on July 17 with Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin present, but Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksey II, who refused to acknowledge the remains as authentic, did not attend.

Metropolitan Jeremiah of France (ecumenical patriarchate) was elected president of the Conference of European Churches, the major ecumenical European church organization, on Nov. 12, 1997. In Estonia Semyon Kruzhkov was elected titular bishop of Abyssos on March 19 to assist Archbishop John of Karelia and all Finland, the administrator of the Autonomous Estonian Church. On August 2 the Albanian Orthodox Church celebrated the sixth anniversary of the restoration of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania with a newly constituted Holy Synod of three bishops under His Beatitude, Archbishop Anastasios.

On February 11 Metropolitan Vasily, head of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, died. Succeeding him, with the title metropolitan of Warsaw and all Poland, was Sawa, the archbishop of Bialystok and Gdansk. Sawa had served as the abbot of Jabloczino Monastery and as dean of the Orthodox department of the Academy of Christian Theology in Warsaw.

Notable among the recent rise of conversions to the Orthodox Church in the United States was theologian and historian Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling professor of history emeritus at Yale University. The author of more than 30 books, Pelikan was received into the Orthodox Church on March 25 at the chapel of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood, N.Y.

Oriental Orthodox Churches

Karekin II, the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul, died in Turkey on March 10, 1998. Subsequently, Archbishop Mesrob Mutafyan, who had served as the head of the patriarchal synod since 1990, was elected acting patriarch of the 65,000-member church body. On August 17, however, Turkish authorities refused to acknowledge the decision, appointing retired archbishop Shahan Sivaciyan in Mutafyan’s place. Protests followed when the Armenian community refused to accept the Turkish decision. Consequently, on October 14 Mutafyan was elected as the 84th Armenian patriarch of Istanbul.was scheduled for October.

His Holiness Karekin I, catholicos of all Armenians, visited Egypt and Germany in January and February, and he traveled to the United States and Canada in June to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the diocese of the Armenian Church in America. Among the Eastern Orthodox leaders he visited was Archbishop Spyridon of the Greek Orthodox archdiocese.

A delegation from the New York City Council of Churches visited Egypt March 10-15 and declared that reports of the persecution of members of the Coptic Orthodox Church in that country had been overstated. In July, however, Egyptian military units closed and sealed a Coptic church in the vicinity of Maadi, near Cairo. Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda and others protested the action.On August 14 police violence in the village of El-Kosheh killed two persons. international protests were lodged with the Egyptian government.

St. Mark’s Coptic Cathedral in Cairo was the location for the consecration of the first patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Eritrea. The former archbishop of Eritrea was proclaimed Patriarch Philipos I at age 92.

JUDAISM

In February 1998 Susan Aranoff of Agunah Inc., on behalf of her organization, encouraged several leading rabbis in New York City to find an acceptable solution to the growing problem of agunahs. According to Jewish law, a woman whose husband is alive may not remarry until she receives from him "get," or religious divorce. Should the husband refuse his consent to this procedure, the wife may become agunah ("chained"), unable to remarry under Orthodox auspices.

Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin attended the opening in the first week of September of a new $10 million synagogue in Moscow. Money for the building, situated in the city’s huge war memorial complex, was raised by Russia’s Jews. "The fact that President Yeltsin went there was extraordinary. This is the first time the President of Russia has ever been at a Jewish event," said Moscow’s chief rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt, who helped organize the ceremony. This project should be seen in relation to the "grass roots" renaissance of Jewish religious life in former Soviet countries, which flowed from a variety of small activist groups of various denominations rather than from any central, official "establishment."

Serious questions about the relationship between church and state arose during the year as a result of activities of Orthodox and other religious groups. These ranged from comments both in favour and in condemnation of U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky affair to demonstrations by Lubavich Hasidim in New York City urging the prime minister of Israel to oppose territorial compromise in his negotiations with the Palestinians to the controversy surrounding the voting directives given by the aged Iraqi-born Israeli mystic Rabbi Yitzhak Kadouri. In connection with the latter, both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis of Israel warned against the "exaggerated and improper use of rabbis," suggesting that though it is acceptable for rabbis to comment on specific political issues that have some religious dimension, it is not proper that rabbis be accorded cultic status to dictate who should govern and how.

Neither Reform nor Conservative Jews appeared to be looking forward to the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, and even among the Orthodox there was little enthusiasm for the restoration of a Temple with animal sacrifices. Many justified this attitude by arguing that, according to Jewish law, the Temple would be restored only under the direction of the Messiah. Even so, a fringe group, the Machon ha-Miqdash (Temple Institute) in Jerusalem, opened a museum and developed educational initiatives to make people aware of what they believed was the central place of the Temple in Jewish tradition and practice.

The International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee met at Vatican City on March 23-26 under the chairmanship of Edward Cardinal Cassidy. It endorsed, with some criticisms from the Jewish side, the recent Catholic document on the Holocaust and also approved a Common Declaration on the Environment, which not only spelled out how the common scripture and subsequent traditions of both Catholics and Jews placed responsibility on humans to safeguard the world and its threatened resources but also acknowledged the pressure of population growth as a significant factor in environmental degradation. Catholic-Jewish relations were, however, placed under strain by the continued erection of crosses at the Nazi death camp near Auschwitz and by the canonization of Edith Stein and the beatification of Alojzije Stepinac in October; both were regarded by the Catholic Church as martyrs to Nazism, but many Jews observed that Stein died because of her Jewish origins rather than her Catholic faith and that Stepinac allegedly cooperated during World War II with the Nazi-oriented regime in Croatia.

In February Rabbi Eliahu Bakshi-Doron, Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, led an international Jewish delegation to a UNESCO-sponsored "day of reflection and dialogue" with Muslim leaders in Rabat, Mor. In light of the political tensions between the Arab world and Israel, Bakshi-Doron remarked, "Just being able to sit and talk about [the conflict] here in a Muslim country is a step in the right direction." Norman Solomon

Buddhism

China in 1998 celebrated the 2,000th anniversary of the introduction of Buddhism into the country, inaugurating a Buddhist research centre in April and sponsoring an international festival in September. Also in April, Chinese officials denounced as fake a Buddha tooth that Tibetan monks in India had given to Taiwan. While in transit the tooth was worshipped by thousands of Thai Buddhists, and it then was ceremoniously received by 30,000 Taiwanese Buddhists, including government officials.

After demonstrations in support of the Dalai Lama in March, Chinese authorities in April evicted 50 Tibetan nuns from Drag Yerpa, removing them forcibly from meditation caves, and in May arrested 15 Tibetan monks. In April China unsuccessfully petitioned Japan to block the Dalai Lama’s participation at an international Buddhist conference in Tokyo. In November the Dalai Lama met in the U.S. with Pres. Bill Clinton. They agreed that talks between China and the Dalai Lama were necessary; China denounced the meeting.

In July Maha Ghosananada, Cambodian supreme patriarch and the recipient of the 1998 Niwano Peace Prize, led 2,500 Buddhists in marches and religious services in support of peaceful national elections. Opposition parties denounced the victory of Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, charging intimidation that included forced oaths of party loyalty at Buddhist pagodas. Clashes between groups of monks who favoured Hun Sen and those who opposed him erupted during and after the election; some resulted in beatings and arrests.

A coordinated celebration of the Buddha’s birthday in May was hailed as an important step toward the reunification of North and South Korea. In June, following two years of anti-Buddhist attacks that included vandalism, arson, and intimidation, South Korean Buddhist organizations strongly condemned religious discrimination and demanded a government apology for pro-Christian bias. In May Buddhists in Russia unsuccessfully protested the removal of a valuable Tibetan manuscript from Ulan-Ude for exhibition in the U.S.; 50 monks and laymen were beaten and detained, which sparked further protests.

Burmese exiles in January accused Myanmar of having executed three monks and arrested dozens more during late 1997 and also of restricting the ordination of pro-democracy monks. In April Amnesty International reported widespread human rights abuses against Burmese civilians, including Buddhist monks. During the same month, Burmese officials asked Thailand to execute members of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army who entered Thai territory. In June Thailand’s Supreme Sangha Council outlawed moneymaking Buddhist funerals and ordered temples to provide free funerals for those who were destitute. In July, after a suburban temple unveiled a statue of the Buddha standing on a globe with his arm raised in victory, the Sangha Council tightened control over religious imagery. In March Buddhist activist Sulak Sivaraksa was arrested for obstructing construction of a gas pipeline on the Thai-Burmese border.

In Sri Lanka the Sinhala Commission, a Buddhist group, in July accused Great Britain of colonial-era crimes against Buddhism, demanding an apology and restitution. Tamil separatists were suspected in the bombing of Kandy’s Dalada Maligawa ("Temple of the Tooth," one of Sri Lanka’s holiest Buddhist shrines) in January, which kil1ed at least 11 but failed to damage the Buddha’s tooth. Buddhist monks led thousands in June 1997 and February 1998 demonstrations and hunger strikes against government plans to sell the Eppawala phosphate deposit to an American corporation known for environmental abuses. The March 1998 bestowal of upasampada (higher ordination) on 22 Sri Lankan nuns at Dambulla, following the October 1996 upasampada of the first Sri Lankan nun, in Taiwan, formally ended a 1,500-year lapse in the Theravada nuns’ order.

A fire in April destroyed Bhutan’s famous Paro Taktsang monastery, killing one monk. In May fire gutted part of the Todai Temple in Nara, Japan.